Inner Calm: Overcoming Worry and Anxiety

A three-stage process of personal transformation based on Judaism and psychotherapy.

Our era has been called the Age of Anxiety, which isn’t surprising considering the pace of modern life, financial stresses, family pressures and global unrest.

I’d like to share a unique approach for reducing worry and anxiety, which I call the ‘ACTive Method’. It’s based on Judaism and psychotherapy, and views anxiety as a call to look within ourselves and express our authentic selves more deeply.

At the method’s core is a three-stage process of personal transformation which was taught by Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar Movement:

Stage 1: Awareness

The first step is becoming aware of our inner dialogue – what our worried thoughts are telling us, and what’s causing them.

Rabbi Salanter preceded Sigmund Freud in stressing the influence of the subconscious on our behaviour. It is common for our worries to result from subconscious concerns or fears.

Anxiety can be rooted in difficult or traumatic experiences from the past, when you felt helpless, disempowered or scared. Anxiety may also result from self-defeating behaviors and character traits, such as an excessive need for control, procrastination, or a lack of confidence.

Stage 2: Control

Once you understand the nature of your worries and their source, you can start to gain conscious control of them by using what is known in Jewish thought as the ‘garments of the soul’. These are our powers of thought, speech and action, which can be used individually or in combination with each other.

Thought: Challenge your irrational thinking

Our worries are often rooted in illusory thinking. Fear can be seen as an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real.” These illusionary thoughts can cause you to blow issues out of proportion and to envision the worst possible scenario taking place. For example, someone worrying about finances may imagine him or herself poor, homeless, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Memories of similar painful or traumatic events from the past can also be projected onto the current situation, and the worry takes on enormous proportions.

By challenging our irrational thinking, we can start to see our worries more objectively and calmly. Ask yourself some of these questions: Are there other plausible ways of seeing the situation? Even if it did happen, will all the negative consequencesthat you anticipate come true? Even if the worst consequences were to come true, how could you best cope with them?

If you find after doing this that there are real elements to your worry, you will need to think about suitable solutions. (We’ll get to this later on.)

Speech: Share your worries; don’t keep them to yourself.

Articulating your worries reduces them. To begin with, it helps you gain insight and develop a more productive perspective. King Solomon advised this, stating “If there is worry in a person’s heart, articulate it, and a good word will turn it into joy.” Also, getting something off your chest and venting negative feelings can bring huge emotional relief.

Sharing your worries with God is also very powerful. King David explained “Cast your burden on God and he will support you” (Psalms 55:23). This has been backed up by scientific research. A recent study interviewed 246 people before they underwent cardiac surgery. The results showed that those who prayed before the operation were less anxious and more optimistic regarding the outcome.

Action: Confront your fears head on.

Implementing a plan of action to deal with your area of concern – facing your fears – reduces the fear by moving you from feeling helpless to feeling more in control. Jewish thought explains that this works because taking action changes our internal thought patterns and feelings, as ‘our heart and our thoughts are pulled after our actions’.

This concept is an underlying principle of behavioral therapy, which focuses on changing behavior to uproot psychological problems. For example, a person who feels great anxiety around dogs would gradually increase his exposure to dogs until he could tolerate them.

Stage 3: Transformation

In this third stage we go beyond just controlling worry to changing the underlying character trait that causes the worry so it doesn’t recur.

Maimonides explains that when we repeat appropriate positive acts many times we gradually create new habits and change negative traits. For example, a person whose worries are caused by being overly controlling needs to repeat actions that exhibit greater flexibility; a procrastinator needs to repeat actions that are more proactive.

Albert Ellis, one of the originators of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, was extremely shy in his youth. Over time, he trained himself to overcome his fear of rejection by striking up conversations with hundreds of strangers in the Bronx Botanical Gardens.

With these changes, a person becomes able to naturally move into a state of calmness and greater joy in life, as Rabbeinu Bachya, explained: “Joy dwells naturally in the heart when worry is removed.”

About the Author

Aryeh Sampson is a psychotherapist practicing in North London and counsels worldwide by Skype. He also a Rabbi and previously worked for Aish UK. Aryeh is the author of ‘Go to Yourself,’ a book based on the teachings of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and modern psychotherapy; he gives workshops and seminars on these topics. For more information about the book visit www.aryehsampson.com

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 3

(3)
Anonymous,
February 17, 2017 6:24 PM

Amen! Excellent article and very well written! Thanks for posting!

(2)
Mike Fishbain,
January 10, 2017 3:35 PM

How could one affect serious health issues including cancer?

A diagnosis of cancer (most likely one from which the patient will not survive very long) is an incredible source of anxiety, fear, and all the other psychologically devastating issues.Even if one is "god-fearing" what can one do to ease this crisis??

thanks

(1)
Anonymous,
January 10, 2017 3:07 PM

Excellent and very helpful! Thanks for posting!

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My nephew is having his bar mitzvah and I am thinking of a gift. In the old days, the gift of choice was a fountain pen, then a Walkman, and today an iPod. But I want to get him something special. What do you suggest?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Since this event celebrates the young person becoming obligated in the commandments, the most appropriate gift is, naturally, one that gives a deeper understanding of the Jewish heritage and enables one to better perform the mitzvot! (An iPod, s/he can get anytime.)

With that in mind, my favorite gift idea is a tzedakah (charity) box. Every Jew should have a tzedakah box in his home, so he can drop in change on a regular basis. The money can then be given to support a Jewish school or institution -- in your home town or in Israel (every Jews’ “home town”). There are beautiful tzedakah boxes made of wood and silver, and you can see a selection here.

For boys, a really beautiful gift is a pair of tefillin, the black leather boxes which contain parchments of Torah verses, worn on the bicep and the head. Owning a pair of Tefillin (and wearing them!) is an important part of Jewish identity. But since they are expensive (about $400), not every Bar Mitzvah boy has a pair. To make sure you get kosher Tefillin, see here.

In 1944, the Nazis perpetrated the Children's Action in the Kovno Ghetto. That day and the next, German soldiers conducted house-to-house searches to round up all children under age 12 (and adults over 55) -- and sent them to their deaths at Fort IX. Eventually, the Germans blew up every house with grenades and dynamite, on suspicion that Jews might be in hiding in underground bunkers. They then poured gasoline over much of the former ghetto and incinerated it. Of the 37,000 Jews in Kovno before the Holocaust, less than 10 percent survived. One of the survivors was Rabbi Ephraim Oshri, who later published a stirring collection of rabbinical responsa, detailing his life-and-death decisions during the Holocaust. Also on this date, in 1937, American Jews held a massive anti-Nazi rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden.

In a letter to someone who found it difficult to study Torah, the 20th century sage the Chazon Ish wrote:

"Some people find it hard to be diligent in their Torah studies. But the difficulty persists only for a short while - if the person sincerely resolves to submerge himself in his studies. Very quickly the feelings of difficulty will go away and he will find that there is no worldly pleasure that can compare with the pleasure of studying Torah diligently."

Although actions generally have much greater impact than thoughts, thoughts may have a more serious effect in several areas.

The distance that our hands can reach is quite limited. The ears can hear from a much greater distance, and the reach of the eye is much farther yet. Thought, however, is virtually limitless in its reach. We can think of objects millions of light years away, and so we have a much greater selection of improper thoughts than of improper actions.

Thought also lacks the restraints that can deter actions. One may refrain from an improper act for fear of punishment or because of social disapproval, but the privacy of thought places it beyond these restraints.

Furthermore, thoughts create attitudes and mindsets. An improper action creates a certain amount of damage, but an improper mindset can create a multitude of improper actions. Finally, an improper mindset can numb our conscience and render us less sensitive to the effects of our actions. We therefore do not feel the guilt that would otherwise come from doing an improper act.

We may not be able to avoid the occurrence of improper impulses, but we should promptly reject them and not permit them to dwell in our mind.

Today I shall...

make special effort to avoid harboring improper thoughts.

With stories and insights,
Rabbi Twerski's new book Twerski on Machzor makes Rosh Hashanah prayers more meaningful. Click here to order...